The Black Pearl: A Newbery Honor Award Winner

By Scott O'Dell

A Newbery Honor Book

From the depths of a cave in the Vermilion Sea, Ramon Salazar has wrested a black pearl so lustrous and captivating that his father, an expert pearl dealer, is certain Ramon has found the legendary Pearl of Heaven.

Such a treasure is sure to bring great joy to the villagers of their tiny coastal town, and even greater renown to the Salazar name. No diver, not even the swaggering Gaspar Ruiz, has ever found a pearl like this!

But is there a price to pay for a prize so great? When a terrible tragedy strikes the village, old Luzon’s warning about El Diablo returns to haunt Ramon. If El Diablo actually exists, it will take all Ramon’s courage to face the winged creature waiting for him offshore.

Like the author's Newbery Medal-winning classic Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell's The Black Pearl is a gripping tale of survival, strength, and courage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 9, 1967
• ISBN: 9780547350462

Scott O'Dell

Scott O’Dell (1898–1989), one of the most respected authors of historical fiction, received the Newbery Medal, three Newbery Honor Medals, and the Hans Christian Andersen Author Medal, the highest international recognition for a body of work by an author of books for young readers. Some of his many books include The Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Road to Damietta, Sing Down the Moon, and The Black Pearl.

Book preview

1

EVERYONE who lives in our town of La Paz, or along the far coasts or among the high mountains of Baja California, has heard of the Manta Diablo. There are many who live in the great world outside who have heard of him also, I am told. But of these thousands only two have really seen him. And of the two, only one is alive — I, Ramón Salazar.

There are many people in the town of La Paz and in Baja California who say they have seen the Manta Diablo. Old men around the fires at night tell their grandsons of the meetings they have had with him. Mothers seek to frighten bad children by threatening to call from the deeps of the sea this fearsome giant.

I am now sixteen, but when I was younger and did things I should not have done, my own mother said to me solemnly, Ramón, if you do this thing again I shall speak a word to the Manta Diablo.

She told me that he was larger than the largest ship in the harbor of La Paz. His eyes were the color of ambergris and shaped like a sickle moon and there were seven of them. He had seven rows of teeth in his mouth, each tooth as long as my father’s Toledo knife. With these teeth he would snap my bones like sticks.

Mothers of my friends also threatened them with the Manta Diablo. He was a somewhat different monster from the one my mother knew, for he had more teeth or less or eyes shaped in a different way or only a single eye instead of seven.

My grandfather was the most learned man in our town. He could read and use a pen and recite long poems right out of his memory. He had seen the Manta Diablo several times both at night and in the daytime, so he said, and his descriptions were nearer the truth as I know it.

Yet, I say to you, that of all the old men and the mothers and even my grandfather, not one has been able to give a true picture of the Manta Diablo.

It is possible that if Father Linares were living today he could tell us the truth. For it was he who first saw him, more than a hundred years ago.

That was the time when the Manta Diablo was a thing with claws and a forked tongue. It roamed our land back and forth and where it went the crops would wither and die and the air was foul. It was then that Father Linares commanded it in the name of God to disappear into the sea and remain there, which it obediently did.

I do not know whether Father Linares saw it again or not, but I do know that while it lived there in the sea it lost the claws and forked tongue and the evil smell. It became the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. Yes, beautiful. And still it was the same evil thing that Father Linares banished from our land many years ago. This is strange.

It is strange also that long ago I did not believe in the Manta Diablo. When my mother would threaten me I would quietly laugh to myself. Maybe I did not laugh but surely I smiled, for how could such a monstrous creature be alive in the world? And if it were alive how could my mother know it so well that she could speak a word and summon it to her side?

My blood felt cold nonetheless, and my scalp tingled when she spoke because I liked to feel this way. I wanted to believe that the Manta Diablo was really alive somewhere and that he would come when she called. Then I could see him and count his eves and teeth while my mother explained at the very last moment that I had promised to be good so she did not want him to snap my bones after all.

That was long ago. Now that I have seen the Manta Diablo and struggled with him during the whole of one night and part of a day, in the waters of our Vermilion Sea, along with Gaspar Ruiz, the Sevillano, I wonder that I ever doubted.

But before I speak about that time and the three of us there on the quiet sea in a struggle of death, before I tell what I know about the Manta Diablo, I must also tell about The Pearl of Heaven.

2

IT SEEMS NOW as if it were a long time ago, but it was only last summer, on a hot day in August, that I sat at the window and watched our pearlers make ready to sail.

My father is Bias Salazar and for many years he was the most famous dealer in pearls anywhere on the Vermilion Sea. His name was known in Guaymas and Mazatlan and Guadalajara, even as far away as the City of Mexico, for the fine pearls he wrested from the sea.

Last July on my birthday he made me a partner in his business. It was a grand fiesta and people came from the town and from miles around to drink chocolate and eat pig roasted in a deep pit. The biggest part was at the beginning of the feast when my father brought forth a sign, which he had hidden until that moment, and nailed it over the door of the office. The sign said in tall gilt letters SALAZAR AND SON, and under this legend in small letters was the word Pearls.

My father beamed with pride. Ramón, he said, pointing at the sign, Look! Now there are two Salazars to deal in pearls. Now they sell twice as many pearls as before and finer ones. They sell pearls in all the cities of the world, these Salazars!

I looked at the sign and blinked my eyes and felt like shouting. But at that moment my father said something that made me feel like a boy and not like a partner in the House of Salazar.

Ramón, he said, pull down your cuffs.

I am not scrawny, yet I am small for my age and thin. My wrists are very thin and my father was ashamed of them. Being so big himself, he did not like to think that his son was puny nor that anyone else thought so.

Afterward my father took me into the office and showed me how to open the huge iron safe. He showed me the trays lined with black velvet and filled with pearls of all shapes and colors and sizes.

Tomorrow, he said, "I will begin the education. First I will teach you how to use the scales with accuracy, for the weight of the pearl is very important. Then I will explain the many shapes, which is also very important. Last of all I will show you how to hold a pearl up to the light and tell just by looking at it whether it is of excellent quality or good quality